In Search of an Enforceable Medical Malpractice Exculpatory

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June 2009] MEDICAL MALPRACTICE EXCULPATORY AGREEMENTS 871 to avoid appearing untrusting or unfair to their doctor. One scholar, for example, reports an interview with a woman who claimed to avoid the subject of costs with her doctor for fear of being insulting or provoking retaliation. 80 A second example can be found in the puzzle surrounding mandatory second opinions. In another paper, 81 I point out that patients assume a fairness cost—the result of expressed distrust of their doctors—in the decision to seek a second opinion that policymakers do not, which helps explain the mysterious success of mandatory second opinion programs. 82 The reasons proffered by patients who do not obtain second opinions under a voluntary regime suggest that (1) fairness costs indeed inhibit the decision to obtain a second opinion, 83 and (2) the fact that fairness costs are vitiated by removing the element of choice explains why patients who do not choose to obtain second opinions do not mind being forced to get them. 84 It is not surprising that patient decisionmaking is influenced by the desire to appear fair. As Mark Hall has shown, trust is an integral part of the doctor-patient relationship. 85 Patients want to trust their doctors and, moreover, to appear trusting to their doctors. 86 It is well documented that “[p]atients want a therapeutic relationship with their doctors, a relationship which produces and prospers on reliance, attachment, and mutual confidence.” 87 Thus, many, if not most, patients are concerned with appearing to be “model,” trusting patients—that is, they can be said to exhibit fairness-regarding behavior of a type that depends on signaling. 80 Mark A. Hall & Carl E. Schneider, Patients as Consumers: Courts, Contracts, and the New Medical Marketplace, 106 MICH. L. REV. 643, 655–56 (2008). 81 Lawrence, supra note 79. 82 More patients obtain second opinions under a mandatory regime than under a voluntary regime. See David A. Hyman, A Second Opinion on Second Opinions, 84 VA. L. REV. 1439, 1458 (1998) (“The most striking fact regarding all voluntary [surgical second opinion programs] is that few people choose to use them.” (quoting Alan S. Friedlob, Medicare Second Surgical Opinion Programs: The Effect of Waiving Cost-Sharing, 4 HEALTH CARE FINANCING REV. 99, 104 (1982))). This success implies that many patients are made to obtain second opinions who would not choose them otherwise and that surveyed patients do not mind mandatory second opinion programs. Stephen N. Rosenberg et al., Patients’ Reactions and Physician-Patient Communication in a Mandatory Surgical Second-Opinion Program, 27 MED. CARE 466, 469–70 (1989). 83 Lawrence, supra note 79, at 19–22 (asserting that patients do not voluntarily seek second opinions in part to avoid upsetting their doctors). 84 Id. at 22–23. 85 See generally Mark A. Hall, Law, Medicine, and Trust, 55 STAN. L. REV. 463 (2002) (discussing fundamental importance of trust to practice of medicine and to healthcare law). 86 Id. at 510. 87 Hall & Schneider, supra note 80, at 652.
872 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 84:850 3. Fairness Costs in Malpractice If, as discussed above, patients are fairness-regarding with their medical providers, the question then becomes: Would a patient, by declining to sign an exculpatory agreement and thereby signaling a lack of confidence in her doctor’s competence and a willingness to sue, be departing from an ideal norm? 88 Given that there are no examples of a patient being presented with a nonadhesive exculpatory agreement (those in reported cases are uniformly adhesive), the question is difficult to answer empirically. However, there is evidence that a fairness-regarding patient would seek to avoid signaling distrustfulness of her doctor and a willingness to sue. First, it is no secret that malpractice suits are a sensitive subject among doctors, 89 and some doctors might even retaliate against patients they view as litigious by refusing to treat them or by practicing “defensive medicine.” 90 Second, it is well documented that doctors have psychological difficulties with the prospect of error, 91 and it is quite plausible that patients are aware of this. Third, studies show that patients sue their doctors very rarely, even when they have a valid cause of action. 92 Moreover, the rate of malpractice suits declines even further if doctors simply apologize to their patients after making mistakes. 93 Superior evidence of fairness-regarding behavior in the real world would be difficult to find absent an empirical study. Thus, it seems likely that for many patients, the signaling effect associated with refusing to sign an exculpatory agreement would impose a 88 This question derives from the definition of fairness presented in note 76 and accompanying text, supra. 89 See, e.g, David Hilfiker, Facing Our Mistakes, 310 N. ENG. J. MED. 118, 121–22 (1984) (“Even the word ‘malpractice’ carries the implication that one has done something more than make a natural mistake; it connotes guilt and sinfulness. . . . [L]ittle wonder that we are defensive about our judgments . . . .”). 90 Dorothy M. Allison, Comment, Physician Retaliation: Can the Physician-Patient Relationship Be Protected?, 94 DICK. L. REV. 965, 965, 967–68, 972 (1990). 91 See JOHN D. BANJA, MEDICAL ERRORS AND MEDICAL NARCISSISM ix (2005) (discussing how error “might assault the professional’s sense of competency and adequacy” and therefore be “psychologically intolerable” for doctors); Cherri Hobgood, Armando Hevia & Paul Hinchey, Profiles in Patient Safety: When an Error Occurs, 11 ACAD. EMER- GENCY MED. 766, 768 (2004) (pointing out that “ideal of error-free practice . . . permeates physician culture”). See generally INST. OF MED., TO ERR IS HUMAN: BUILDING A SAFER HEALTH SYSTEM (Linda T. Kohn, Janet M. Corrigan & Molla S. Donaldson eds., 2000) (presenting comprehensive study of errors in healthcare system). 92 See PAUL C. WEILER ET AL., A MEASURE OF MALPRACTICE: MEDICAL INJURY, MALPRACTICE LITIGATION, AND PATIENT COMPENSATION 140 (1993) (“[O]ur analysis of malpractice litigation data demonstrates that the problem is not a litigation surplus, but a litigation deficit.”). 93 See Kevin Sack, Doctors Start To Say ‘I’m Sorry’ Long Before ‘See You in Court,’ N.Y. TIMES, May 18, 2008, at A1 (reporting that as result of doctors apologizing for medical errors, “hospitals are reporting decreases in their caseloads and savings in legal costs”).
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